Imagine you wake up one morning and begin to get ready for the day. When you look at yourself in the mirror, you are horrified by what you see: you have a massive case of bedhead, eye crust is piled up in your eyelids, last night's dinner is stuck between your teeth, and you look [...]

We have all experienced the pain of betrayal, unkind words spoken, and possibly even more serious hurts inflicted by someone against us. What is the natural response when people wrong us? Retaliation is often our first instinct. But is that the loving, Christian response? When someone wrongs us, God calls us not to do them [...]

When you mess up or wander away from God, you might feel like that's it. You might think, "The things I've done are too much. God couldn't forgive me." But that is not true. The amazing thing about God's grace is that it's not too late for you. There is still hope for you even [...]

While hiking on a trail in the Smoky Mountains, my husband and I needed to make a decision. The sign had said the trail was only a few miles—but it didn't say we were headed uphill through rough terrain. Hot and weary, we considered going back, but once we realized how far we had already [...]

We tend to feel confident when the people in our lives respect us and celebrate our accomplishments. We feel good when we do big things. But when we are struggling and no one seems to notice us, we might start to question our value. As humans, we want to impress others and to be accepted [...]

I have days when I wonder, "How am I going to get through this?" It feels like the things I need to do and the steps I have to take are too much for me. I wonder if I will be strong enough to keep moving forward. But in the times when I feel like [...]

If we are honest, at one time or another we all have doubts about our faith, what God is doing in our lives, or God's character. In Mark 9, a man brought his son, who had been possessed by a demon since childhood, to Jesus for healing. The father said to Jesus, “If you can [...]

Abeo sat alone in his room. He heard laughing and talking coming from downstairs. “Are they singing?” He laid back on his bed. He'd told everyone that he wanted to be alone. He really wished that they would miss him down there, though. There was part of him that hoped someone would come up by [...]

Do you get frustrated with the amount of stuff accumulating in your space? For some of us, it's easy to get things but not as easy to get rid of those items when they are no longer being used. Although the Israelites in the Bible did not necessarily have the issue of accumulating too many [...]

My heart aches for unity in the church. I see so many divisions—Christians disregarding each other, judging, shaming, excluding and I feel powerless. Unity seems impossible. One day I shared my feelings with my church small group, and then one of my friends shared John 17:20-26. In this passage, Jesus was sharing the Passover meal [...]